Host: Is this a good deal?

[Georg R. Baumann]

I just ordered a 2 years hosting package for ~90 euro, the deal includes 110GB storage and 5 TB bandwith/monthly.

This is the first time I have to deal with such stuff, and believe me after researching for hours, I am dizzy.

Is this a good deal at a glance?

 

[Ray West]

Hi Georg,

Does it matter? less than a euro a week - guess that's not a problem. Enough space/bandwidth? - your guess. Will they be down for repairs, slow, go bust? - who knows. A difference between cost and price, as in most things. Let us know in two years time.

What did you want me to say? If they offer what you want, at a price you can afford, get on with loading up your images and start selling. ;-)

Best wishes,

Ray

 

[Georg R. Baumann]

Hi Ray,

well the whole issue is new for me, so I sat here since 5 AM and tried to find out where, what, why, how much and so on.

One thing is for sure, the irish are rip off's.

10GB storage and 75GB bandwith/month: 870 Euro for 24 month. Crazy!

 

[Steve Saunders]

That's a great deal George, where did you get it? I know POWWEB have good deals and very minimum downtime, so you should try and see if there is any feedback or support forum and find out how your newly found host performs in the real world before forking out the money.

 

[Georg R. Baumann]

Hey Steve,

http://www.site5.com/hosting/

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

Hi Georg,

I have spent a considerable amount of time in the past for finding the "right" host for me.
As Ray has written, it should not matter since it is only a Euro per week. And that is indeed right. But if I may, I'll address a couple of issues I've come accross myself.

Firstly, TANSTAFL (there ain't no such thing as free lunch). In other words, none of the hosts promising "unlimited" storage and bandwith for just 5 $ a month can actually deliver it. Your hosting plan states an incredible 110 GB. You can be sure that once you've filled up some 15% of it, you'll get a mail from your host. If your data keeps on growing, they will try and sell you an upgrade account on a less populated server somewhere else. If you do not comply, they'll start moving your account between servers, the IP numbers will change and you'll go crazy since every change will mean a distruption to the accessibility for at least 48 hours till the DNS propogation takes place globally. The same story for the bandwith. Actually, almost all hosts have to have some small print in their terms of service somewhere stating that abusing the available system bandwith is prone to unilateral termination of your account with them. Usually, continous utilization of more than 25% of the available resources of the server your account is hosted on is a breach of their ToS. However, any regular web site, even the very popular ones, never get anywhere near a BW in the order of a TB let alone a GB, unless you let people download and upload thousands of high resolution images. So this should be no problem in your case. The moral of this story is that it may be sometimes better considering hosts that have severe BW and storage restrictions, but realistic ones backed up by a quality of service guarantee. It is much more important to know that:
- your host does not allow spammers or porn sites as clients, so that your server IP won't possibly get blocked by a DNSBL (blocklist servers).
- your server will not be overloaded by 100s of other sites, which may then even be retail accounts selling virtual hosting to sub-accounts.
- your host has a proven uptime reputation, servers are fast and responsive
- there is good customer support and also an active and friendly user forum which is not censored by the host.

In short, if you can find a host that can deliver these as a guarantee, go for it even if you have to pay the double amount. You'll be much happier on the long run, believe me .

Cheers,

PS: I am also a happy customer of site5.com for two years right now. Not entirely w/o problems I must admit, but s**t happens everywhere and site5 staff has always been very helpful in sorting out the issues quickly and effectively.

 

[Ray West]

Hi Georg,

It's all FUD - fear, uncertainty and doubt. The idea is to confuse the customer, offer 'packages', rip off on the accessories, etc. Depending on what you want to do, to get it working, you have to pay more- I'm thinking 'shopping carts', and the like.

I'm guessing the Irish were offering an isp package, not just a hosting package.

Best wishes,

Ray

 

[Jörgen Nyberg]

Hi George

One thing to consider, that can be easy to miss, starting out on the net, do you think most of your customers/visitors will be in europe or stateside? The speed differs quite a bit, depending on which side of the pond they are (when we're talking co-hosted).

Re your deal, sounds to good to be true, if you ask me. Right now I'm paying 7 euros/month for 1GB storage and 25GB bandwith. I tried cheaper ones before, but the lack of support and constant eratic downtime, made me switch to a more reputable firm. If you are paying 4 euros/month, I'm afraid it will be a slow affair.

But as Ray said, who knows, only time will tell.

 

[Ray West]

Hi Georg,

Having had a brief look at your hosting provider, I think what you have found looks OK. I use Verio, also in the USA - have done so since before they even existed. They are more expensive than yours, but offer me far more than I need, and customer service, which I rarely use is absolutely first rate, or it was when I last called them two years ago.

So, it's not as if you've spent a fortune, and if in six month's they don't perform, you've lost nothing. It's not as if you have already built your web site, or have an established business requiring gigabytes of band width.

Once you've made a few sales, you can pay someone to take care of this sort of hosting stuff.

Best wishes,

Ray

 

[John_Nevill]

Hi Georg,

I was burned by a host provider last year, I spent two years building up a web presence and then things went awry, forcing me to up sticks and move.

I then moved onto another host provider and their european datacenter was shutdown after 3 months of poor service. It transpired that the company were buying chunks of space / bandwidth from another host e.g. reseller. When the plug was pulled, I couldn't get access to my data, so beware.

I'm now sitting happy with hostcolor, my web sites although based is in the US, are fast, I get 5Gb storage and reasonable bandwidth for ~100euros/year. Customer service is good and they respond to support tickets very quckly.

One thing to consider if you go for a shared host (typical for this cost), is what back up control do they provide. Personal web sites /galleries tend to evolve and 6 months in, it will be both sizeable and less organised (data wise) than you originally intnded it to be.

You'll be adding content, moving stuff around and the ability to take daily / weekly backups, when you want to is worth its weight in gold, espcially if you forced (or want) to move. Similarly, make sure that any database (that sits behind your site) is accessible for back up.

BTW, some of the better providers will have standard application packages which you can configure / tailor to your needs from the host control panel. e.g blog, gallery, forums etc.

Another option to consider is something like http://www.clikpic.com/ for £80 (year), all the hassle is taken out of web site management and you get enough space for 400 images with an in built shopping facility, plus you can tailor the site with additional content.

Hope this helps.

 

[nicolas claris]

Hi all

we have our website and some client's hosted there, they are located North of France.
Service is not that fast, but we haven't need it yet (being hosted there for more than 3 years).

Some very rare times mail is slowed when their server is under hackers attacks, but mostly no problem.

If you're far away from Europe, you may check how fast/slow our website is displayed, try the photo galleries in the photo menu... and let me know !

 

[Georg R. Baumann]

Hi Cem, very useful feedback, thanks a bunch!

Hi Ray, nope. no ISP package, it was Host only in deed, Ireland is rip off country number one in Europe, trust me, even the Irish say that, being ripped of everytime they go shopping. It's a disgrace, and stupid, because they shoot in thier own foot longterm, but thats a different story.

Hi John, yeah, a friend of mine runs a large forum with download section and guess what, he got burned as well, and coincidently I just found out that he moved his whole shebang to the same provider where I ended now, he has no complaints which is encouraging. <smile>

Hi Nicolas, thanks for that info!

 

[Steve Saunders]

"your host does not allow spammers or porn sites as clients, so that your server IP won't possibly get blocked by a DNSBL (blocklist servers). "


That's very important, especially if you are using the mail function that the hoster provides. If the hoster gets blacklisted, then you will find that people registering won't get the e-mail activation messages or notifications of replies to posts etc because the hosters e-mail is being flagged as spam.

 

[Georg R. Baumann]

yup! I send you a PM Steve

 

[Steve Saunders]

To give an idea of bandwidth useage you may need, my own humble motorcycle site generally uses about 30GB a month. That's with a fairly busy forum and a picture Gallery with I think 1400 images taking up 600mbs of space in total. If you aren't going to be having lots of pictures or video clips on your site, you will get away with well under 10GBs bandwidth a month.

 

[Georg R. Baumann]

Cheers Steve, my site plans are to offer downloadable catalogs which contain a select set of pictures. However these slideshows will be running with embedded music that I compose and produce for each slide show individually.

So I thouhgt, although this is a shared service and has it's usual TOS restrictions (streaming and so on) and is not a dedicated server at the moment, I will be on the safe side with a 5TB/month very much so. The scripts they offer are really usefull, Mambo, Joomla, Coppermine etc. all there. Last not least they rank somwhere in the Top 10 at the moment, I know those rankings do not tell you a lot, but they came as a private recommendation to me as well, last not least the package price was very tempting in deed. <smile>

 

[Steve Saunders]

All the best of luck with it George.